Crime and Consequences Blogtag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2008-08-28:/crimblog//12017-08-17T19:42:15ZMovable Type 5.04News Scan tag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147222017-08-17T19:44:12Z2017-08-17T19:42:15ZCJLF Staffhttp://www.crimeandconsequences.org
Court Rejects Iowa Murderer's Appeal: An Iowa appeals court has denied a life-sentenced murderer's claim that his re sentencing to comply with the Supreme Court's 2012 ruling in Miller v. Alabama remains unconstitutionally harsh. Mark Mahoney of NWest Iowa reports that John Mulder had been sentenced to LWOP for the 1976 murder of a 55-year-old woman in her bed. Mulder, who was 14 at the time, used a stolen rifle to shoot Jean Homan as she was sleeping next to her husband. Following the high court's ruling in Miller, a new sentencing hearing was held to provide individualized consideration of his age when determining his sentence. After the judge re-sentenced Mulder to life in prison with parole eligibility after 42 years, Mulder appealed arguing that the sentence still violated the state's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The Iowa Court of Appeals rejected this claim. ]]>
Primary Notestag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147212017-08-16T18:13:31Z2017-08-16T18:26:52ZKent Scheideggerhttp://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/ccdescription.htmAlabama held a primary to fill the remaining two years of Jeff Sessions' Senate term. Senator and former AG Luther Strange, appointed to fill the seat until the election, finished second with 32.8% of the vote. Former Chief Justice Roy "We Don't Need No Stinking Establishment Clause" Moore finished first with 38.9%. Alabama has runoffs for primaries, so they will go "heads up" on September 26.

How will the voters who voted for other candidates divide in the runoff, if they show up at all? I'm inclined to think they will break for Senator Strange in a large enough proportion to make up for his 6-point lag. I hope so. We don't need any more loose cannons in the Senate. The general election is December 12. The Dems have chosen former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones as their candidate.

Utah held a primary in the race to fill the vacant seat of former Rep. Jason Chaffetz. Provo Mayor John Curtis won the Republican nomination with 42% of the vote. No runoffs in Utah. Mayor Curtis was regarded as the more moderate candidate. The district is overwhelmingly Republican, so the November general election is likely to be a blowout. ]]>
News Scan tag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147202017-08-16T18:13:14Z2017-08-16T18:14:01ZCJLF Staffhttp://www.crimeandconsequences.org
MS-13 Bust in Ohio & Indiana: On Tuesday, Federal agents arrested ten members of the "Columbus Clique," a branch of the brutal MS-13 gang. Travis Fedschun of Fox News reports that three other members of the gang were arrested in Indiana and agents are looking for two others. All of the suspects have been indicted for extortion, money laundering and illegal firearms charges. The Justice Department estimates that there are 10,000 MS-13 members spread across 40 states, engaging in extortion of immigrant businesses, sex trafficking, and the machete and baseball-bat murders of teens, children and pregnant woman. The President has tasked federal law enforcement with taking down the Salvadorian-based gang.

ABA: Allow Illegals to Practice Law: The American Bar Association House of Delegates passed a resolution Monday directing Congress to allow "undocumented" immigrants to practice law in the U.S. Alberto Luperon of LawNewz reports that the resolution seeks to amend 8 U.S.C. 5 § 1621(d) to read: a state court vested with exclusive authority to regulate admission to the bar may, by rule, or other affirmation act, permit an undocumented alien seeking legal status to obtain a
professional license to practice law in that jurisdiction. California, Florida and New York have allowed illegals to represent clients before their courts.

Teen Drug Overdoses Spiking: A report by the National Center for Health Statistics indicates that, for the first time in seven years, the drug overdose rate for U.S. teens is rising, increasing by nearly 20% in 2015. Jessica Glenza of the Guardian reports that the same report found that the overdose rate from synthetic opioids for all Americans has increased six-fold since 2002, with fatal heroin overdoses tripling over the same period. Among teens the increase in overdoses is highest for girls. While the abuse of prescription drugs is also a serious national problem, most fentanyl and heroin is sold by drug dealers (undocumented pharmacists). In August 2014, the drug dealer who sold heroin to fatally overdosed actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman cut a plea deal reducing his possible 25-year prison sentence, to 25 days in rehab and 5 years probation. ]]>
Is the ABA a Shill for the Defense Bar?tag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147192017-08-16T13:44:46Z2017-08-16T14:10:34ZBill Otishttp://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/ccdescription.htm
this and decide for yourself. It starts off (emphasis added):

The ABA House of Delegates on Tuesday approved a late-offered resolution backing a ban on mandatory minimum sentences, while sponsors withdrew another late sentencing resolution after hearing from the U.S. Justice Department.

Delegates approved Resolution 10B, which opposes the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences in any criminal case. The resolution calls on Congress and state legislatures to repeal laws requiring mandatory minimums and to refrain from adopting such laws in the future....

"Sentencing by mandatory minimums is the antithesis of rational sentencing policy," the report says. Basic fairness and due process require sentences to be the same among similarly situated offenders and proportional to the crime, the report says.

The belief that Congress ought to be able to set a rock bottom minimum for serious offenses -- an idea taking root in the same uncontroversial notion that it can set a binding-on-judges maximum -- evidently never occurs to the ABA. The organization understandably cites no precedent in two centuries of case law for its proposal that sentencing courts should have 100% discretion 100% of the time, and Congress can go sit in the corner.

No, the main problem is not that the Left smears but that they lie. "Lie" is a strong word, but it's the only one that correctly captures what's going on. Moreover, they generally lie with impunity. While the more adult advocates on the Left will criticize insult as a means of debate, only a handful will call out the lying. Even when they do, it's largely excused as being merely push-the-envelope advocacy.

Two recent examples of flagrant lying come to mind.

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entry today, it notes a broad-based challenge to the death penalty mounted by the renowned Neal Katyal, a very smart lawyer and a former Acting Solicitor General in the Obama Administration. It quotes the cert petition Katyal filed in the Supreme Court as stating:

A national consensus has emerged that the death penalty is an unacceptable punishment in any circumstance.

What can I tell you? That assertion is a point-blank lie. I need not recur to the fact that, according to Gallup, 60% or more of the public supports the death penalty, now as for at least the last 40 years; nor to the fact that every major Presidential candidate has supported it, including the last two; nor to the fact that the death penalty won substantial victories everywhere it was on the ballot last November, most notably in deep blue California; nor to the fact this year and over the last five years, the country has had an execution on an average of once every two weeks (or slightly more often, see.https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-year).

No, one need only recur to the strained method abolitionists themselves use, to wit, the number of states with the death penalty (31) that have had executions in the last ten years. That number would be be 20, or roughly two-thirds of capital punishment states. See the table compiled by none other than the DPIC, https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/jurisdictions-no-recent-executions.

But hold on, you say. Shouldn't we count all the states, not just those with the death penalty? The answer is no, for reasons explained by Justice Alito in his four-member dissent in Kennedy v. Louisiana,

But even that is not the point. The point is that, even if one does count all the states, 40% of them have had executions in the last decade. Now 40% is not a majority, but it's a large enough minority to make it not merely false, but preposterous, to claim that there is a "national consensus...that the death penalty is an unacceptable punishment in any circumstance."

(This is not the place to elaborate the fact that it is up to the elected branches, and not the intentionally non-majoritarian judicial branch in any event, to determine when there exists a "national consensus").

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The other point-blank lie that popped up recently was featured in a second entry on SL&P. The article there discussed is a supposed "news story" by the NYT credulously channeling a one-sided argument by the advocacy group Alliance for Safety and Justice.

The argument, and hence the "news story," is to the effect that crime victims themselves, unlike President Trump, favor a rehab-over-prison approach to criminal justice. In the course of making this argument, the head of the Alliance, one Aswad Thomas (a shooting victim), is quoted by the Times as saying:

'Lock 'em up and throw away the key,' that's the traditional way of thinking, but many victims don't want 'tough on crime' and incarceration...Most of us want more rehabilitation services for crime victims.

The claim that the "traditional way of thinking" is "lock 'em up and throw away the key" is just flat-out false. The traditional way of thinking is that the punishment should fit the crime. No serious person -- not one -- thinks now or has thought for time out of mind that a life sentence (throwing away the key) is an appropriate sentence for any but a tiny number of crimes.

If the head of the Alliance for Safety and Justice doesn't know this, he's a fool. But the chance he doesn't know it is remote. The greater chance by far is that he's a liar. He simply concocts the other side's "position" to smear it as a bunch of vindictive, knee-jerk know-nothings.

So there we have it. Aggressive, and mostly not even remarked-upon, lying. This is what the other side is up to, in the New York Times and in Supreme Court briefs, and why it's increasingly almost impossible to attempt to have a conversation with them.

P.S. I won't get into the obvious fact that wanting more services for crime victims is not in any way inconsistent with wanting more punishment for victimizers. Incoherence is a different problem from mendacity.

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Retaining Counsel With Dirty Moneytag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147172017-08-15T18:23:13Z2017-08-15T18:42:49ZNicole Hong reports for the WSJ, "Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, the Mexican drug lord awaiting trial in New York, wants to hire private lawyers. But they may have to join the case without any assurance of getting paid."Guzmán is presently...Kent Scheideggerhttp://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/ccdescription.htm
reports for the WSJ, "Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, the Mexican drug lord awaiting trial in New York, wants to hire private lawyers. But they may have to join the case without any assurance of getting paid."

Guzmán is presently represented by the federal defender. His potential private lawyers want "blanket, prospective assurance" from the government that the money he uses to pay them won't be forfeited. The government, unsurprisingly, said "fuggedaboudit," or something to that effect.

See this post from last year on the Supreme Court's fractured decision in Luis v. United States and Dean Mazzone's article that I linked to yesterday. Continuing with the WSJ article:

Mr. Guzmán wants to hire a team led by Jeffrey Lichtman, most well-known for securing an acquittal for John A. Gotti, son of the notorious mob boss. The team also includes A. Eduardo Balarezo, William Purpura and Marc Fernich, all of whom have had experience defending mobsters or drug traffickers.

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"This is still America. The man deserves not only his choice of counsel, but he deserves a fair trial," Mr. Lichtman said.

Um, yes, this is still America, but a defendant does not have, and never has had in this country, a choice of counsel he does not have the money to pay for. Indigent defendants get the counsel they are appointed. Is the rule any different for a defendant who has money obtained illegally and forfeitable to the government? No, but tracing the money can get complicated.

As for the right to a fair trial, is every trial in which the defendant is represented by a public defender inherently unfair? I don't think so. ]]>
News Scan tag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147152017-08-15T17:29:41Z2017-08-15T19:54:03ZCJLF Staffhttp://www.crimeandconsequences.org
NY Times: Counter-Protesters Were Armed: The violence in Charlottesville last weekend and the death caused by what appears to be a deranged neo-Nazi has appropriately focused national attention on the despicable views held by some on the fringe right. A piece by Farah Stockman of The New York Times reports on the counter protest organized to confront the white supremacists who organized the rally. Masked members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, some carrying weapons, showed up to engage in violence. Similar protesters showed up last February at U.C. Berkeley to shut down a talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, setting fires, and attacking people, ditto for a talk by Heather MacDonald at Claremont McKenna College last June, and a small white supremacist rally in Sacramento last summer. In all of these cases the protesters initiated the violence. Bob McManus of the City Journal wrote this piece on how the police handled things in Charlottesville.

Rate of Black Homicides: A recently released article by Alex Berezow of the American Council on Science and Health reports that the rate of black homicides is nearly quadruple the national average. Specifically the homicide rate per 100,000 is 20.9 for blacks, 4.9 for Hispanics, 2.6 for whites and 5.7 for all races.

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Justified Use of Forcetag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147162017-08-15T16:52:26Z2017-08-15T16:56:57ZAlex Schiffer reports in the WaPo:The New England Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston was vandalized Monday night by a 17-year-old who was immediately tackled by bystanders and held until police arrived, police said.I wonder ... If the vandal sues the...Kent Scheideggerhttp://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/ccdescription.htm
reports in the WaPo:

The New England Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston was vandalized Monday night by a 17-year-old who was immediately tackled by bystanders and held until police arrived, police said.

I wonder ... If the vandal sues the tacklers, will the people who regularly decry the use of force in response to "mere property crimes" support him? ]]>
Studies Are Usually Bunk, Study Showstag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147142017-08-14T23:09:30Z2017-08-15T16:45:18ZAndy Kessler has this article with the above title in the WSJ.Hands down, the two most dangerous words in the English language today are "studies show."The world is inundated with the manipulation of flighty studies to prove some larger point...Kent Scheideggerhttp://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/ccdescription.htm
this article with the above title in the WSJ.

Hands down, the two most dangerous words in the English language today are "studies show."

The world is inundated with the manipulation of flighty studies to prove some larger point about mankind in the name of behavioral science. Pop psychologists have churned out mountains of books proving some intuitive point that turns out to be wrong. It's "sciencey," with a whiff of (false) authenticity.

* * *

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Bunk medical studies are worrisome, but who really cares about pop behavioral science? It's easy to write this off as trivial, except millions take these studies and their conclusions seriously. The 2008 book "Nudge," from academics Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, called for "libertarian paternalism" to push people in the right direction. But who decides what's the right direction? Turns out the answer is Mr. Sunstein. He was hired by the Obama administration in 2009 to run the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Call it psychobabble authoritarianism.I would not go so far as to say that most studies are bunk. A far more common problem is people citing studies for their bottom-line result with far more certainty than the study actually warrants. This unfortunate tendency has multiple causes. Part of it is lack of sophistication among people who consider themselves oh-so-sophisticated in holding forth on what "studies show." Understanding the limitations requires depth, and pseudosophisticates don't have it.

Part of the problem is confirmation bias. If a study "shows" what one already believes, those pesky limitations just clutter the message.

Part of the problem is the need of news media to make their stories simple and newsworthy. A story that "Study Shows X" is simpler for the readers and bigger news than "Study Suggests X But Then Again Maybe Not For The Following Complex Reasons."

Some studies are bunk, of course, or at least borderline bunk. Particularly for studies with political implications, advocate-researchers may overstate the certainty and downplay the limitations on purpose. It is hard enough to understand the limitations of studies when they are stated frankly, but it is much more so when the author attempts to cover them. This is unethical, but if a study has a Politically Correct bottom line, few people in academia want to risk pointing out its shortcomings or even its dishonesty.

And I do like the phrase "psychobabble authoritarianism." It is a valuable addition to the lexicon.]]>
Evil or Crazy?tag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147132017-08-14T21:46:51Z2017-08-14T22:03:11ZKent Scheideggerhttp://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/ccdescription.htmFrom the picture emerging out of Virginia, it appears that James Fields is mostly evil but maybe a little crazy. Dake Kang and Sarah Rankin have this story for AP. Along with being an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, it appears that he beat his own mother and threatened her with a knife. He also was diagnosed with schizophrenia at one point, but it does not appear so far that his mental illness was on the same scale as Loughner's.

Bill argues in this post that the crime calls for the death penalty. At this point, Fields has been charged with second-degree murder, which would preclude that sentence. The charge could be upgraded as further facts develop, however. Stay tuned.]]>
Shifting Ground on Forfeituretag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147112017-08-14T18:08:38Z2017-08-14T18:12:45ZDean Mazzone of the Massachusetts AG's Office has this article in the Federalist Society Review discussing last year's Supreme Court decision in Luis v. United States....Kent Scheideggerhttp://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/ccdescription.htm
this article in the Federalist Society Review discussing last year's Supreme Court decision in Luis v. United States. ]]>
Charlottesville and the Symbolic Value of the Death Penaltytag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147122017-08-14T17:52:01Z2017-08-14T18:13:14ZBill Otishttp://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/ccdescription.htm

I support the death penalty for a number of reasons, but the Charlottesville murder, like the Boston Marathon murders and Charleston church massacre, illustrates the main one. There is some behavior so pernicious, and so grossly outside the boundaries of peaceable life as we have come to understand it, that we as a polity have the right to say no and mean it. Not merely to gush with remonstrance. To act, with certainty and force.

I have my doubts that the death penalty should be reserved for "the worst of the worst," even supposing that phrase could be subject to any operational definition. But even if I'm wrong about that, this episode, if it is what it seems to be, qualifies under any definition.

Nazism, Aryan supremacy, or racial supremacy of any kind has a history. We don't have to guess where it leads. Slave ships and the ovens at Dachau and Buchenwald tell us. A society that lacks the moral confidence to put a permanent end to actors this barbaric lacks the moral confidence to do anything.

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News Scan tag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147102017-08-11T22:23:37Z2017-08-11T22:54:46ZCJLF Staffhttp://www.crimeandconsequences.org
The Risk of Using Risk Assessment Tools: Anti-death penalty advocates make their strongest argument when they remind us that, for all of its time intensive layers of review, America's criminal justice system cannot guarantee that 100% of the murderers sentenced to death are actually 100% guilty of the murders they were sentenced to die for. Because of this, CJLF has always advocated that any legitimate question of guilt, ie. a claim supported by evidence, should trigger additional review or default the sentence to LWOP. Anti-incarceration advocates use the same "the system is not perfect" argument to support "smart sentencing" and "right on crime" reforms aimed to prevent the good criminals from going to prison, or even jail in some states. To placate the gullible into supporting such reforms proponents assure us that brilliant scientists have developed sophisticated "risk assessment tools" to distinguish the bad criminals who might hurt somebody from the good criminals who just want to steal your car or wallet. This would be wonderful if the risk assessment tools, which are algorithms originally developed to anticipate changes in financial markets, worked on humans. But they don't. In fact, they are far less perfect than the mean old "three strikes and your out policy" of the 1990s or the "three will get you twenty" policy of the 1950s. When these risk assessments get it wrong, innocent people get raped, robbed and murdered by the bad criminals the algorithm failed to identify. Right now in California, the Legislature is considering using these wonderful "risk assessment tools" to determine which arrestees should be released without bail prior to trial. The one-thousand-strong Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys Association has this post on the real world effect this junk science has on public safety. Note: The Arnold Foundation, which developed the tool discussed, partners with George Soros' Open Society Foundation on criminal justice policy issues.

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News Scantag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147092017-08-10T19:08:15Z2017-08-10T19:10:34ZCJLF Staffhttp://www.crimeandconsequences.org
Habitual Criminal Stabs CA Woman: A Sacramento woman is in the hospital today after a habitual criminal on probation broke into her home and stabbed her just after 5:00 a.m. Wednesday morning. Nashelly Chavez and Jacob Sweet of the Sacramento Bee report that the suspect, 24-year-old Jordan Lynch was on probation when he entered Delia Trip's home through a sliding door and attacked her. The woman suffered stab wounds on her neck and back as she fought for her life. Neighbors, alerted by her screams, caught Lynch attempting to flee and subdued him until police arrived. He is facing charges of attempted murder. California law categorizes most property and drug offenders as low risk for violence, and restricts sentences for these crimes to county jail and probation. Serious felons released from prison who violate their parole are routinely sentenced to a few days in county jail and released to light supervision on probation.

10th Circuit Overturns Murder Conviction: A unanimous panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of an Oklahoma man who murdered his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend in 1999. Robert Boczkiewicz of The Oklahoman reports that the court overturned the conviction because the murder occurred on Indian Land and murderer Patrick Murphy should have faced trial in federal court rather than in state court. Facts provided in the ruling indicate that in August 1999 Murphy, a member of the Muscogee Tribe, told his girlfriend that he was going to kill her ex-boyfriend George Jacobs and his family. Murphy and two accomplices tracked Jacobs down on a rural road in Indian Territory and forced his car off the road. The group attacked Jacobs and another man in the car. During the attack Murphy dragged Jacobs into the bushes and castrated him, then dragged him back to the side of the road and fatally slashed his throat and stomach. A jury convicted Murphy of murder and sentenced him to death. Murphy appealed citing the jurisdiction issue and claimed he was mentally retarded. The court rejected the retardation claim. Murphy will be retried in federal court. ]]>
News Scantag:www.crimeandconsequences.com,2017:/crimblog//1.147082017-08-09T18:30:02Z2017-08-09T18:28:29ZCJLF Staffhttp://www.crimeandconsequences.org
Repeat Felon Nabbed For Killing Cop: A habitual criminal has been arrested for last Sunday's murder of a Missouri police officer. Dhomonique Ricks of Fox News reports that during a traffic stop at about 10:45 Sunday night, Ian McCarthy jumped out of his vehicle and shot down officer Gary Michael, 37. Roughly 100 local, county and state law enforcement officers were involved in an intense manhunt which ended with McCarthy's arrest Tuesday. At the time of the shooting, McCarthy, who has spent time in prison for first-degree assault and violating parole, was wanted in New Hampshire for leaving the state prior to sentencing on a disorderly conduct charge and in Johnson County, Missouri for unlawful possession of a firearm. The murdered officer had a wife and three children.

Non-Violent Offender Charged With Murder: A Louisville, KY man charged with the Saturday, August 5th murder of 31-year-old man, had been released on Kentucky's Home Incarceration Program (HIP) five days earlier. Natalia Martinez of Wave News reports that proponents of the HIP program touted it as a safe way for the state to prevent jail overcrowding and reduce incarceration costs. The suspect, Justin Curry, has been released on HIP on August 1st after he was arrested for cocaine possession and violating probation. Currey had priors for drug dealing, receiving stolen property, illegal firearm possession, assault and domestic violence. All of these are considered low-level, non-violent crimes that qualified Curry for release as a low risk-offender. Prior to the 2011 adoption of Kentucky's Public Safety and Offender Accountability Act, these crimes would have qualified him for time in prison or county jail. Tough luck for the victim. ]]>